Here.
I've just read the beginning so far (and will unfortunately probably only get a chance to read bits at a time through the day today), but so far it's a really fascinating read. The Nietzsche/marginalism connection is interesting although of course by no means unique to Austrians. I'm anticipating that the latter portion on Nietzsche and Austrians "turning the market into the realm of great politics and morals" will be more convincing.
The expected set of people are crying bloody murder. That means one of two things: (1.) Robins has written something really bizarre, or (2.) Robins has written something very insightful and he's struck a nerve.
The former might be the case on the marginalism point although so far he doesn't seem to be claiming marginalism is just an Austrian thing. I'll let you know what I think on the rest of it later.
Monday, May 13, 2013
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I read some of that article, I wasted 10 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.
ReplyDeletehttp://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/05/on-robins-tenuous-connection-between-nietzsche-and-hayek/
ReplyDeleteThanks for that link. That's an impressive and spot on analyis (and one that undermines my earlier claim about the essay being (for me at least) unsummarizable)
DeleteI skimmed a lot of the article. I'm not even being snarky; I have no idea what the guy's point is. It's like talking about the connection between Ronald Reagan and Star Wars, since they both were popular in the same cultural era, except SDI was actually nicknamed Star Wars, so it makes more sense than this article.
ReplyDeleteYa it's a subtle argument... so I hadn't determined if it was brilliant or not much there.
DeleteSomebody on facebook had said that Robin was claiming Nietzsche "influenced" the Austrians... this is demonstrably not true - he said very clearly in one of the initial paragraphs that he was not saying that. It's more going through how Nietzsche impacted the milieu of Vienna in the interwar period.
Anyway, I didn't get any more than the few pages I read initially so I'll have to wait to comment further (and probably don't have enough background in the stuff even then).
Bob wrote: "I skimmed a lot of the article. I'm not even being snarky; I have no idea what the guy's point is. "
DeleteYeah, me neither. Truly, I wouldn't be able to summarize the argument, or even just the narrative or the point(s). As in, if somebody offered me a Bitcoin to do so, the incentives are there, but I simply would not be able to discern the argument/narrative/point.
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Daniel wrote: "Ya it's a subtle argument..."
It's neither subtle nor an argument. You're mistaking meandering obscurantism for subtlety.
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Somebody on facebook had said that Robin was claiming Nietzsche "influenced" the Austrians... this is demonstrably not true - he said very clearly in one of the initial paragraphs that he was not saying that.
ReplyDeleteHang on a second. The title and subtitle clearly imply that's what the point of the article is. Now maybe Robin didn't choose them, but then, when you say he "very clearly" denied that was his thesis, *I* didn't get that impression. Like I said, I skimmed 80% of the article and have no freaking idea what his thesis IS, so I went with the title and subtitle.
indeed he clearly says that he doesn't claim that Nietzsche *influenced* the Austrians. What he does claim is 'elective affinities'. That's right, "elective affinities". You know, "elective affinities".
DeleteThat claim, compared to a claim of influence, of course has the advantage of dramatically lowering the standard of required evidence.
Truly, I wonder if one used this guy's general framework of juxtaposing things the way he does in this article how many similar articles one could not write juxtaposing just about anything with just about anything else.
Ya but come on - the claim that Nietzsche influenced central European intellectual circles is not exactly an off the wall random alignment of ideas.
DeleteGod knows we've seen crazier connect-the-dots. This one seems relatively viable.
And Robin has written elsewhere that this was not a random exercise. He was intrigued that consistently libertarians cited Nietzsche as an influence on them (yes "influence" in this case) when surveyed on intellectual influences.
"Ya but come on - the claim that Nietzsche influenced central European intellectual circles is not exactly an off the wall random alignment of ideas."
ReplyDeleteYou're right about that, but 1) Robin doesn't even claim this (that Nietzsche influenced the early and somewhat later Austrians). Instead he speaks of 'elective affinities', 2)the way he tries to substantiate this claim of "elective affinities" is so vague and low on evidence that if one generalizes it, it could probably be used to make the case for "elective affinities" between all sorts of different things.
The general form could be used to create something like an automatic Alanis Morrisette lyrics generator (so an automatic "elective affinities between schools of thought in the history of ideas" generator)
I should add though that there were several parts of the essay that I thought were interesting, and at times even insightful.
[oh, full disclosure, I changed my profile name but used to write as The Narrator. I thought it'd be fair to mention that.]
It's an exercise in intellectual history. The same genre includes, for instance, Richard Hofstadter's essay about John C. Calhoun, subtitled "Marx of the Master Class." Hofstadter does not claim that Calhoun read or was influenced by Marx, simply that at a similar time, his thinking addressed many of the same issues, with interesting similarities and differences that are illuminated by the comparison.
DeleteCorey Robins is terrible -- like reading the Birch Society on Karl Marx ...
ReplyDelete